The McColls Newsagent,with its post office in Reynolds Way, closed a month or so back. There are currently no plans for an alternative Post Office in that part of town, and a lot of people are suffering as a result.

Last Saturday I went into the nearest post office, in the Co-op in the town centre, and saw the biggest queue I had ever seen there. It had filled the airport style queueing barriers and extended back almost to the Co-op counter.

The chip shop in Reynolds Way has also closed but I am told that it is closed only for refurbishment.

The TSB has announced that it will be closing 82 branches in 2020,

and the TSB at 1 Stert Street will close in April 2020.

A spokesman said this was ‘in response to changing customer behaviour’.

This is not the first time a Trustee Savings Bank has closed in Abingdon. Trustee Savings Banks began as places for smaller savers. A local Savings Bank (with trustees) was started in Abingdon in 1820 and closed in 1892. It too was in Stert Street. An article in the Reading Mercury of 1902 reported that many local Trustee Savings Banks had closed and their deposits been transferred to the Post Office Savings Bank, including the one in Abingdon.

The current Abingdon Trustee Saving Bank opened at 1 Stert Street in the 1940s. Trustee Savings Banks amalgamated between 1970 and 1985 to form one Trustee Savings Bank that got renamed TSB. The TSB went on to merge with Lloyds and so for some years Abingdon had two Lloyds TSBs.

After the 2008 banking collapse, and government rescue, the TSB was forcibly separated from Lloyds. It did not get the best of separations, and now the TSB is closing branches.